Mushim Ikeda is a meditation teacher, community peace activist, writer, diversity facilitator, and mother of a 23-year-old son. She has done both monastic and lay Zen Buddhist practice over the past thirty years, in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and S. Korea. Her poetry, fiction and essays have been published widely in journals and anthologies such as Tricycle and Innovative Buddhist Women: Swimming Against the Stream. Mushim was coeditor of Making the Invisible Visible: Healing Racism in Our Buddhist Communities. Her work has been featured in two documentary films, "Between the Lines: Asian American Women Poets" and "Acting on Faith: Women and the New Religious Activism in America." Mushim is a core teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center in downtown Oakland.

Dharma Talks at Zen Center

On Wednesday, August 15, 2012, 7:30pm, at City Center, Mushim Ikeda spoke on "Daylighting the Hidden Streams: Why Our Stories Matter." She began with a quote from bell hooks, who says, “Beloved community is formed not by the eradication of difference but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world.” Through the practices of cultural humility and the invitation of sacred stories, Buddhist communities can become open, vital conduits for the hidden streams of life experience that flow through and around us. Her talk can be found here.